Mozilla and China

This blog is primarily focused on the activities around and related to Mozilla and Firefox. It also necessarily touches upon the Internet in China, as well as intriguing aspects of life in China. It hopes to share observations, relay interesting findings, and also serve as a notice board as well as reporting pages for events we organize, participate, or promote.

Li Gong (宫力 in Chinese) is Chairman and CEO of Mozilla Online Ltd., the Beijing-based subsidiary of the Mountain View, California, headquartered Mozilla Corporation. Mozilla Online’s mission is to promote the vision of the Mozilla Foundation and promote the adoption of the Firefox browser.

Born and raised in Beijing, Li obtained BS/MS at Tsinghua University and a PhD at the University of Cambridge, UK. He started his career as a researcher, primarily in the fields of computer systems, networking, and information security. He served as both Program Chair and General Conference Chair for ACM CCS, IEEE S&P, and IEEE CSFW. He was Associate Editor of ACM TISSEC and Associate Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Internet Computing. He held visiting positions at Cornell and Stanford, and was a Guest Chair Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing.

In 1996 he left SRI International (in Menlo Park, California) to join the newly formed JavaSoft division at Sun (in Cupertino, California) where he was Chief Java Security Architect (and responsible for the Java security architecture and product lines in use today across all three major Java platforms) and became a Distinguished Engineer and later a senior engineering director. He headed engineering for Java Embedded Server (the home networking platform) and JXTA (the P2P platform, see jxta.org) before returning to Beijing in 2001 to found Sun’s Engineering and Research Institute (ERI). He served as General Manager at ERI and grew it from scratch to over 400 engineers. He was instrumental in setting up the (now expired) Mozilla China Foundation and served as its founding co-president. He joined Microsoft in 2005 as a corporate General Manager to head up MSN in China, with operations in Beijing and Shanghai, and grew the team ten-folds to work in many areas across all the services MSN offers — including Messenger, Hotmail, Spaces, Safety, Mobile, Search, Ads platform, and Virtual Earth. He was Venture Partner and Head of China Office for Bessemer Venture Partners. He participated (variously as cofounder, investor, and advisor) in a number of startups in the Sillicon Valley and in China. He joined Mozilla in 2007 to found Mozilla Online Ltd.

Li has 14 issued US patents, co-authored 3 books (published by Addison Wesley and O’Reilly) and many technical articles, and received the 1994 Leonard G. Abraham Award given by the IEEE Communications Society for “the most significant contribution to technical literature in the field of interest of the IEEE.” He was named one of the 2003 China New Economy People by China Internet Weekly and Sina.com, and received the China Open Source Movement Leadership Award in 2003 given by CCID and the China Software Industry Association. He was the founding Beijing chapter chair of TEEC (Tsinghua Entreprenuer and Executive Club) until 2007.

谋智网络董事长兼首席执行官 宫力博士

宫力，北京人，清华大学学士、硕士，英国剑桥大学博士，毕业后曾在计算机系统、网络和信息安全方面从事研究工作，担任过 ACM CCS、IEEE S&P、和IEEE CSFW 的大会程序主席和大会主席，以及ACM TISSEC杂志的编委和IEEE Internet Computing的副主编。此外，宫力博士曾任康奈尔大学和斯坦福大学的访问教授，以及北京清华大学的客座教授。

1996年，宫力博士离开位于加州的斯坦福国际研究院，加入Sun公司新成立的Javasoft分部，担任Java首席安全架构师，负责Java安全架构和产品线，成果今天已被广泛应用于三个最主要的Java平台（标准，企业，和移动）。宫力博士被选为Sun杰出工程师，也担任过高级工程总监，领导家庭网络平台产品Java嵌入式服务器和P2P平台的JXTA技术（参见jxta.org）。2001年回到北京并组建Sun工程研究院，担任院长，并将研究院规模扩大至400人。宫力博士当时还帮助设立Mozilla中国基金会，任联合创始主席。2005年加入微软公司任MSN中国总经理，领导北京和上海的团队，参与多项业务，包括Messenger、Hotmail、Spaces、Safety、Mobile、Search，以及广告平台和地图。2007年组建北京谋智网络技术有限公司。在过去的十多年里，宫力博士还以创办人，投资人，以及顾问等身份参与了多个在美国硅谷和国内创新企业的成长历程。

宫力博士在研究领域亦硕果累累，拥有14项美国专利，出版了3部英文专著，并在国际一级学术杂志和会议上发表过60余篇学术论文。 1994年，宫力博士因杰出贡献获得IEEE每年一度的 Leonard G. Abraham大奖；2003年，被《互联网周刊》和新浪网联合评为“中国新经济人物”，同期被CCID和中国软件联合会授予“中国开源运动领袖奖”。2008参与创办清华企业家俱乐部并担任北京分会的创始主席。